For my essay I am going to compare the signalman and lamb to the slaughter. I am going to look at the differences and the similarities in these two short stories.

Lamb To The Slaughter And The Signalman

Lamb to the slaughter starts with a warm setting in the Maloney household. Unlike the signalman which starts off with tension and mystery. The importance of mystery is very important in this story, as there are many parts of the story that contain mystery. E.g. the man at the bottom of the cutting. The signalman is a horror story contrasting lamb to the slaughter, which is a murder story. There are many different words that are different in the story. Both writers use different words to describe what the setting is like. Dahl uses warm, clean, fresh, smiling, soft, blissful, rested, and silent but Dickens used stronger words like anger, violent pulsation, rapid and clammy. These words by dickens give out a stronger atmosphere.

Mrs Maloney is the wife of a policeman named Patrick Maloney. Lamb to the slaughter starts with ‘the room was warm and clean.’ This tell the reader that the room is clean and looked after by the person in the room. This brings a warm atmosphere. This is the complete opposite to the signalman. The story starts with ‘Halloa! Below there’ this does not contain a warm atmosphere at all. Straight away there is some type of tension because you do not know who is going to answer. This brings a cold atmosphere to the opening stages of the story. Both authors describe something different. Roald Dahl gives you an idea of what the room looked like and what it felt like being in it. But Charles Dickens is creating the unexplainable. It makes you question if the man at the bottom of the cutting is deaf or blind. He could even be lost. Both stories are based on different amount of days. Lamb to the slaughter is based on just one night unlike the signalman, which is based on several nights.

The time in which these two stories were written had a long gap in-between them. Both of these short stories have many similarities and many differences, the signalman was based in the 19th century and lamb to the slaughter was based in the 1950’s. The time of when the stories have been written is a great deal difference but you still find similarities in them. The signalman is a murder mystery and so is lamb to the slaughter. The signalman is set in the 19th century. Even in the nineteenth century there was some belief that there was supernatural world and ghosts. The Victorians wanted to explain everything but they couldn’t explain the supernatural. If someone was to read the story at the time it was written they would be more absorbed to the story because less people in the 21st century believe in supernatural things. This is because there is less talk now than there was back then of supernatural things.

With the opening of lamb to the slaughter you would not expect any type of murder. But in the first few lines of the signalman you know that something is going to happen. In lamb to the slaughter, it takes time for something to happen but with the signalman it does not take very long. This is because of the opening of the signalman. The signalman is also dark, making the setting very gloomy unlike with lamb to the slaughter. Even the opening of the signalman you expect some type of tension.

With the opening, the reader expects a ...

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With the opening, the reader expects a romantic type of story or even a type of drama with lamb to the slaughter. With the signalman, the reader knows something exciting is going to happen. When you first read the signalman you will find is has a better murder story. This is because there is a twist to the story unlike with lamb to the slaughter.

The lamb to the slaughter is typical of the 1950’s. You would have a female who does everything for her husband and the husband expects everything from the female. In the 50’s, it was most likely to make your clothes than to buy them. This would of defiantly happened in the 19th century. Lamb to the slaughter is a murder story. It brings a different type of murder story as the killer if a female. I believe Roald Dahl is trying to show that females are capable of murder. They are just as witty as their opposite sex. The story contains one female as a main role in the story. There is only one female in the whole story.

With the signalman there is poverty because of the industrial revolution. People at that time were forced to work with harsh conditions. Unlike with lamb to the slaughter, Mr. Maloney has a good job as a policeman and Mary Maloney is a housewife. The signalman is forced to work away from other people. Being away from people for the signalman is very similar to Mary Maloney. She is away from everyone. She only has the company of her husband when he comes home from work. There is also a difference, she is expecting the presence of some at the end of the day and the signalman only has himself because it seems as if he lives alone.

The setting does help you with how suspense is built and if suspense is going to be built. The settings of both stores are completely different but that does not stop murder in the story. Murder can come from anywhere, even in a place where there are plenty of people, e.g. Hyde Park, London. Murder can come from anywhere. You can also kill someone with over a thousand different ways and there are also thousands of ways to die. The setting doesn’t effect how the person dies but it does help with the suspense.

The theme to lamb to the slaughter is a violent death. But with the signalman it is a tragic death. With lamb to the slaughter there is a type of comic theme because the way Mary Maloney covers it all up and then she makes the policemen eat the murder weapon. It shows you that if your clever enough you can get away with murder. You ask yourself if the signalman is paranoid but then again he is reliable. You could also say he was kid of a friend to the man who called him. You can question is Mary Maloney is impetuous. She might be because she never though about what could’ve happened if the police found out what she had done. You wonder if she has a dark side to her. Maybe she was angry of being left alone in a home all alone all day, waiting for someone to look after when she could have her own life. Thing anger could have built over a period of time and then she would have lashed out on her husband. I believe that she does not have a dark side but she did the killing on the spare of the moment. She did it without thinking.

The three main characters in lamb to the slaughter are Mary Maloney, Patrick Maloney and Jack Noonan. Mary Maloney is pregnant, she is sex months with her baby, and at first she seems happy with the life of her husband. She believes that her husband loves her and she loves him. There would be nothing in the way of that. When Patrick tells her the news, you can tell she is uneasy. This is because what he had told her came to her as a bit of a shock. She then does not know what to do.

In many ways, she is a bit like the signalman who is also troubles. Mary is just like the signalman with her work, she will not let anyone stop her from doing her job. They are both precise with their work. Patrick and the signalman are similar as they both see trouble ahead of them. Jack Noonan from lamb to the slaughter breaks the whole point of a mystery story. When you have a detective, you would expect him to solve a crime, but he cannot as he and his co-workers had eaten the evidence. When the police are eating the lamb, one of the policemen says ‘under our noses’ this has a double meaning to it. The first meaning would be that it is somewhere around us, not too far from here, but with this story, the evidence is right in front of them and they were eating it whilst talking about where it could be. I think the policemen are slightly dull as they never considered the lamb to be a murder weapon and again I think that the murder can happen from anywhere. It can also be done by anyone. Even a female. They should consider everyone even the wife of the deceased.

The signalman is well educated for a man who works with trains. He is cut off from civilisation because of working in a dark cutting. I think that he never used to work in the cutting. He only had to because of the industrial revolution. Maybe he lost his job or working there made more money. The signalman is a lot like Mary Maloney, he is isolated from everyone. You ask yourself, has the signalman lost his grip on reality or is it just paranoia. Should he go and see a doctor because of his strange acts?

Once you read on with the story you find out why his reasons for his strange behaviour is. This different from lamb to the slaughter, you never find out what Patrick said to Mary that forced her to kill her husband. The man who was the father of her baby. But then again, he might of left because of something she had done. She might have been with another man and the baby might have been some else’s.

The style of both stories gives you a better view of the story as they give a better direction of feeling which ads to suspense in the story. The opening of the signalman stays open. The signalman does not have a beginning middle and end unlike lamb to the slaughter. The way the signalman written is harder to understand as it has many twists. Lamb to the slaughter starts with a warm atmosphere and then enters a murder. This is very shocking because the opening is the complete opposite to the end.

The signalman has short lines so that builds up more tension, than long sentences like lamb to the slaughter, Dickens uses less descriptive writing about the setting than Roald Dahl in Lamb to the Slaughter. I feel that Lamb to the Slaughter is more to the point but the signalman is slightly dull as it drags on a bit.

Suspense is built in the signalman with short lines. In lamb to the slaughter there isn’t much suspense at first, suspense is only when Mary kills her husband. There is also a bit when you wonder if she is going to get caught. When she kills him, suspense is built when you wonder if she will get away with it. And whether the police will find the weapons that she killed him with. Even though the weapon has meant to be his supper. At the end of the signalman the question is, what if? With Lamb to the Slaughter the question is whether she will get away with her murdering her husband. When she giggles you then realise she might have a type of split personality, she might be nice at first but if you do wrong to her, she will be evil towards you. Both of the stories leave open questions to what could or could’ve happened. I think that Lamb to the Slaughter is better than the signalman as it makes you think more. It makes you want to keep guessing what he told his wife. And whether she was going to get away with it. In the end she does and I find it rather surprising to find her laugh as she has just lost her husband.

Both writers have a different approach to their stories. Dahl is a more modern writer as he wrote stories in the mid 19’s. His stories are designed to be shown on TV and his written style is more efficient than Dickens. Basically he does not have a lot of descriptive bits as he lets the reader make up his own mind and add their own bits. You would think that he would assume that his readers were familiar with a typical suburban home because they have access to TV and video as well as well as cinema and would have been examples of typical homes dozen of times. It is this background to his story, the time in which it was written, that helps you explain some of the differences between his and Dickens. Dahl wrote his story in which a way he know would appeal to his audience in 1979 just as dickens would’ve in the 19th century.